Career
Toby earned a doctorate in Japanese history from Columbia University in 1977. As a university professor, Toby"s teaching experience has included the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of California at Berkeley, Keio University, and the University of Tokyo. Toby"s academic specialization focuses on issues having to do with preand early-modern Japan.
His book State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan demonstrates that during the so-called "closed country" period in the Edo era, Japan was never truly closed to the outside world.
